For something like this, I don't think any marketing big cheese would be involved.
H&M faces customer boycott over 'racist' hoodie advertising campaign
- Thread starter explorerzip
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Why is it shocking? If you're black you likely would have personal experience with it. If you're not black (and I'm not) you likely would not have heard of it. So I think we have to be careful about prejudging people about what they ought to know about what words are offensive. H&M is headquartered in Sweden, but we don't know who or where the shirt was designed. It could have been designed in China where the phrase "coolest monkey in the jungle" means nothing.
Your logic is very flawed.
Even though they are not a high end company, they are very high volume and generate billions of dollars of revenue. As such, the impact of poor image is just as much as a company that charges more for its' product. They have just as much to protect and as such must have proper oversight.
Whatever. I have a 23 year old niece who knows "monkey" is a derogatory term to people of colour. Did you know that it's wrong to call a mentally challenged person an imbecile? That was a term used in the 30's.... But you know that one don't you.
Marketing experts are supposed to be experts in knowing cultural context.
But I would expect that the choice of models was unintentional. The photog was probably told to get pics of a couple kids wearing the clothes and found a couple kids.
A lot of clothing shots aren't even real. It's photo editors piecing together pics of people and fudging digital assets onto a body.
I wouldn't be surprised one bit if none of the kids even actually wore a sweat top.
They're in a highly competitive and low-margin industry. So their goal is to move from design to finished goods as quickly as possible. Maybe they 'should' have more oversight, but choose not to because it's another expense. Besides, they have bigger worries with competition like Amazon.
Perhaps a boycott will affect them negatively. Perhaps not. We'll have to see.
you would think it would of crossed someone's mind given the sensitive nature of everything these days. Also its an unly hoodie too.lol
Exactly right. This is a commericial enterprise so at the very heart you have to evaluate it as a fuck up from a purely commercial standpoint. From the photographer, to the ad agency who reviewed and edited the photos, to the H&M ad manager who signed off on the copy - it's hard to believe that not one of those people thought "hmmmm, maybe we're sending a confusing message about our brand". Marketing 101.
That would be a good tactic if it gets people in the stores. Create some fake outrage, which will make people talk about the brand and might get curious people into the stores.
The boy's mother feels it is much about nothing.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-5257715/Mother-H-M-race-row-child-model-speaks-out.html
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-5257715/Mother-H-M-race-row-child-model-speaks-out.html
Actually there's plenty of examples where something is "okay" on a white person but "not okay" on an ethnic person (or vice-versa), especially in ad campaigns, movies, tv, etc.:
1) Any episode of TV that involves terrorism (even domestic) and the bad guy/gal is automatically brown (be it Iranian, Afghani, etc.). The Unabomber was a white dude and one of the most infamous domestic-grown terrorists in recent history, yet people don't walk around suspecting every white guy in a hoodie. Put a Brown / Black guy in one and everyone is looking at them sideways.
2) Movies where the heroes are all white, and the villains are all conveniently ethnic. The Last Air Bender is a perfect example of this: the canon material featured an ethnically diverse world and cast of characters (Asian, Inuit, Indian), both good and evil with nary a white-looking person to be found anywhere, but the white-washed Hollywood casting put all the good guys as white kids and the bad guys as brown people. THAT is a deliberate decision on someone's part, and was clearly reinforcing bad racial stereotypes.
3) There was a news article last year about some Montreal Elementary School teachers that got in trouble for making their kids wear paper Native American head-wear for the opening day of school. While not "racist", it was flamed for cultural insensitivity. It would have been one thing if it was a First Nations heritage event initiated by Native students/staff, but it was just some would-be-do-gooders that were clueless that they had no right to touch this with a ten-foot pole. http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/montreal/outremont-headdresses-racism-quebec-school-1.3739916
4) Same goes for Halloween - tons of costumes have come under scrutiny when worn by people not of the ethnicity it depicts. Still an open debate mind you, but the PC police have been all over it.
5) A swastika in the hands of a white person is an automatic Neo-Nazi association. In the hands of a Tibetan / Buddhist and (properly inverted) it's a religious symbol.
Really?
I live in Europe. And they ALL KNOW that 'monkey' is a derogatory term to black people. Within many football stadia in Spain and Italy until just a few years ago, black players were subject to loud monkey chants by the WHOLE stadium.
Sam Eto'o walked all while playing for Barca. Every time a black player touched the ball during a Spain vs England match in Spain...MONKEY chants. This is nothing new. Way back when Jamaican-born John Barnes was playing for Liverpool he and other players in the league had bananas hurled at them!
Try another line...
Plenty of people including me don't live in Europe, know every single derogatory term for black people or any other culture, or pay attention to European sports.
H and M is a European company though. And a big one. Between focus groups and the execs they all failed on this one.
And not because I personally see this as racial. But we have hit enough critical mass of people who do.
Cripes I'm waiting for when food becomes cultural appropriation.......
